State-owned BNI kicks off public offering campaign

JAKARTA (JP): State-owned Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) 1946 today begins its campaign to offer 25 percent of its paid-up capital to the public later this year.

The sales campaign, called a roadshow in capital market jargon, will travel to six other cities -- Bandung in West Java, Surabaya in East Java, Medan in North Sumatra, Malang in East Java, Semarang in Central Java and Ujungpandang in South Sulawesi -- and to some of the world's major financial centers.

The overseas roadshow will be held from Oct. 14 to Oct. 24 in major cities in Asia, Europe and the United States.

BNI, the largest state-owned bank in the country, announced Friday that it had already filed a registration statement with the Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam). Registration is the most important step in a bank's public offering plan.

The bank, with total assets of Rp 32.35 trillion (US$13.7 billion as of June 30, said that it would sell around 25 percent of its paid-up stock to the public to raise fresh funds for its expansion program.

BNI has yet to announce when it will offer its shares to the public or the volume of the initial public offering (IPO), which is expected to become the largest after Telkom's share flotation on the London, New York and Jakarta stock exchanges last November.

Analysts predict that BNI's share issue, expected to reach around Rp 1 trillion ($425 million), will be offered to the public sometime in the second week of November.

The bank has appointed state-owned PT Danareksa Sekuritas, the largest securities company in the country, as the main underwriter of the offering. Lehman Brothers of the United States has been assigned as the financial advisor for the underwriting of the bank's shares on overseas markets and publicly-listed Bank Dagang Nasional Indonesia as the settlement bank for the public offering.

The bank said that JP Morgan has also been assigned as the financial advisor during preparations for the IPO plan, while the Ali Budiardjo, Nugrowo, Rekso Diputro law firm has been appointed as legal advisor and Prasetyo Utomo as public accountant.

Deposits at the bank had reached Rp 17.90 trillion as of June 30 and its loans Rp 20.44 trillion.

Its pre-tax profit was recorded at Rp 198.6 billion in the first semester of this year, or more than a half of last year's pre-tax profit of Rp 378.7 billion.

The bank did not unveil its paid-up capital but said that its capital adequacy ratio (CAR) is 9.1 percent of weighted-risk assets.

The bank's IPO, first publicized in early 1994 and initially scheduled to coincide with its 50th anniversary in July, was delayed for undisclosed reasons. (hen)